


Chronicled

by quiterighttoo (remade)



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:21:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remade/pseuds/quiterighttoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has a book full of her life with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chronicled

The Doctor had never spoken of Rose Tyler.

Not because he didn't care; because he did and she knew that he did. She could see it just below his eyes, that there was someone else. It was because he thought it cruel. After all, he had known that she would die, he had watched her die. For him.

Donna Noble, she knows, disappears and leaves this gap in him like all the hope he had left had been drained away. She always wished that she could fix it but never can get quite that deep. He loved her well enough but she wasn't enough, not always, and she knew that she could never replace these... people that he never mentioned. What she doesn't know is that it was Donna who had given him hope back, that he had already been broken.

She has a book full of her life with him. It was chronicled in great detail down to the very last minute she saw him. When she closes her eyes, this is the picture that is painted there: He is standing in a tux and overlooking beauty but she was more taken by him than anything else in that world.

What she lacked, however, was the before. The before Barcelona and before Jefferson and Anderson and Kennedy. What she was missing, and she remembered it acutely sometimes and allowed the pain to seep in, just a bit, was a big part of him.

River Song loves the Doctor, she loves his aged hands and his slightly-gray hair. She loves the fact that his smile is just so. But she doesn't love this Doctor and shies away from combining the two in her mind. It doesn't really matter anyway, she learns soon after the realization, as she doesn't have much time to think on it.

His name. He leaned over to whisper it in her ear one day as she was cleaning up after lunch. That was it. No great spectacle, but he had disappeared for three months afterward and she knew, she just knew, that she had done something wrong.

The Doctor had never spoken of Rose Tyler. Not because he didn't care but because she had, because River Song had loved him, would love him, always in that damn endless loop. And he would always watch her die in the same way he watched Rose fall.


End file.
